


Florence

by osprey_archer



Series: Reciprocity [19]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 04:11:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3555557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky visits Steve in Florence. It's kind of rocky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Florence

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [littlerhymes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/pseuds/littlerhymes) for betaing this!

Bucky should have been easy to spot in a crowd, even a crowd as fluctuating as the one in the Santa Maria Novella train station, but Steve didn’t see him until Bucky was standing directly in front of him. Even then, Steve was fairly sure that Bucky had been standing there for a few seconds before Steve stopped scanning the crowd and focused on him. 

He’d exchanged his usual sweatshirt for a blue jeans jacket. It really didn’t look much like his Howling Commandos jacket, but nonetheless it startled Steve badly. “Oh!” Steve said. “Hi. I’m glad you could make it.” 

“Hi.” The shadows under Bucky’s eyes were so deep that they looked almost like battle kohl. His stringy hair was falling out of its ponytail and his lips looked dry and bitten, and Steve wanted to grab him and hold him and never let him go. 

But Bucky’s posture bristled with don’t-touch-me, so instead Steve asked, “Did you have lunch?” 

Bucky shook his head. 

“Then let’s get you something,” Steve said. “Do you want to go to a restaurant? Or we could stop at a café for sandwiches if you want something quick. Have you had prosciutto? Or we could go to my hotel room…” Steve hesitated. “You don’t have any baggage.” 

“I’m not staying the night.” 

Fuck Coulson. “Let’s get you something to eat,” Steve said, and led the way out of the station. 

After a summer communicating through a computer screen, it felt odd to be back in Bucky’s physical presence. He seemed bigger – not that he’d seemed small on the screen; Bucky was a big guy. But he took up more space than his mere size warranted, like a cat with all its fur puffed up: shoulders braced, arms swinging, swaggering as he walked. 

The swagger was at least partly because of the weight of Bucky’s metal arm. But he was amplifying it now, swinging his arm with extra vigor as they walked, and it occurred to Steve suddenly that Bucky did that with all his damage. He leaned into it, exaggerated it, reveled in it; he embraced it with such enthusiasm that it was almost impossible to see that it hurt. 

“Gelato,” Bucky said. His voice was a little hoarse. He strode across the road to a gelato stand, ignoring the indignant Vespa driver who had to swerve to avoid him. Steve caught up just in time to hear Bucky ordering _fior di latte, per favore._

“I didn’t know you knew Italian,” Steve said. 

Bucky didn’t answer for such a long time that Steve thought he wasn’t going to. But then Bucky said, as if the words had been dragged out of him, “Un piccolo.” He licked his gelato neatly around the rim of the cone so it wouldn’t drip. “Just a few words. From ’43.” 

Of course. “I forgot you were in Italy,” Steve admitted. 

“Of course you did,” Bucky snapped. “You think only the parts of my life where you were with me count.” 

Steve was taken aback. “I do not,” he said. “They’re just the only parts I can talk about, because you never tell me about anything else.” 

Bucky shrugged. His gelato was beginning to melt down the side of his cone. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Steve asked. 

A dollop of gelato detached from the scoop and fell splat on the road. Bucky’s jaw clenched and jumped. “ _No_.” 

He didn’t want to talk about anything. Steve tried a few more stabs at conversation, but Bucky didn’t say much more than _yes_ , _no_ , and _I dunno_. Steve steered them out of the crowded tourist areas – Bucky had never said anything about it, but Steve knew crowds worried him – and that took some of the bristle out of Bucky’s shoulders, but he still didn’t talk. 

It depressed Steve a little. He had felt closer to Bucky when they were talking on the comscreen. 

But the first meeting was bound to be hard. Steve kept talking intermittently, as topics came to him. He’d started sketching again in DC – taking a class, actually, once a week, nothing fancy – and he’d been dismayed to find how out of practice he’d gotten, but he’d done some sketches in Florence that weren’t half bad. He’d been to most of the art museums already, but if Bucky wanted to go – 

Bucky shook his head. No, Bucky did not. Steve considered bringing up the paintings of naked Renaissance ladies, then decided no, better not. “Would you like more gelato?” he asked. “Natasha recommended a place. Naturally she knows the best gelato on three continents.”

That got an involuntary smile out of Bucky. 

“The watermelon gelato’s really good,” Steve added. 

But Bucky shook his head. The smile disappeared again. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts.

Sweat trickled down Steve’s back under his t-shirt and beaded on his upper lip. Bucky had to be sweltering in that jacket. 

“I want a waffle,” Bucky said suddenly. “With Nutella.”

Steve jumped on it. “Yeah? Let me get you one.”

Bucky caught his lower lip between his teeth. “I can buy it,” he snapped. “I get a salary.”

“I know, Buck. But I want to buy it for you.” 

Bucky shrugged. 

At a gelato stand, Steve bought two waffles, one for each of them, and two bottles of water as well. He took Bucky to his favorite place in Florence, a shaded bench down by the Arno, away from the main arteries of tourist traffic. They could hear the babble of tourists above, far enough away that it melded into a peaceful stream of sound, like rain. Few people came down by the river, and few boats plied the water, either. 

For once Steve ate much faster than Bucky did: the waffle was hot and good and crunchy with sugar crystals around the edges, which was not what Steve had expected but tasted excellent regardless. Bucky ate more slowly, his eyes on the brown river, and licked the Nutella off his fingers after. 

Steve caught himself staring. He got his little sketchbook out of his pocket instead. The river was brown and the hills behind the city golden and umber, dotted with those tall poplar-slender Tuscan pine trees. A cliché subject, although the angle was a little unusual, at least. 

He didn’t have as much practice sketching countryside as buildings, and it absorbed his attention. He’d sketched in the outlines – the hills, the quick blocks of buildings below – when a movement to his side caught his eye. Bucky had leaned in, just a little, to get a better view as Steve sketched. Steve smiled at him. 

Bucky looked away at once. Steve repressed a sigh. He remembered this behavior: Bucky would entertain himself quite happily as long as Steve took no interest in what he was doing. But a word, sometimes even just a glance, and he would stop reading his book or watching passersby through the window or whatever else he’d been doing, with an air reminiscent of a cat who had been caught acting foolishly. _You didn’t see that_. 

That behavior had mostly tapered off during his suspension. Steve hoped it hadn’t come back in full force on the Bus. 

Steve closed his sketchbook over his finger. “You want to keep walking?” he asked. “We could go to the Boboli Gardens. They never seem to be crowded.” 

Bucky shook his head. 

“I’ll keep sketching, then,” Steve said, and flipped the sketchbook back open. He got caught up in the sketch, getting the squat square outlines of the buildings just right, and tapering the arches of the bridge toward the vanishing point, and when he glanced at Bucky again, he saw that Bucky had dozed off. “Bucky?” Steve said. Bucky lifted his head, rubbing at his eyes. Steve shut his sketchbook. “Let’s go back to my hotel so you can take a nap.” 

Bucky’s shoulders rose defensively. “I was on the train all night,” he snapped. 

“Where did you come from? No, shit, sorry. I know I can’t ask. But I would have been happier to go somewhere closer if Coulson told me Florence was too far,” Steve said. Why hadn’t Coulson given Steve a location closer to the Bus? Was he really that worried about giving something away to eavesdroppers?

Bucky scowled. 

“Come on, Buck.” Steve stood up, stowing his sketchbook in one of his big pockets. “My hotel room has air-conditioning.”

Bucky’s shoulders relaxed. He pushed himself to his feet. 

Steve’s hotel was a shabby sort of place, with dim lighting that almost hid the faded wallpaper and the battered furniture. The rooms had wall air-conditioning units, but the halls didn’t, and the windows were open in the desperate hope of letting in a breeze. 

Steve had left his window open too. It seemed a waste to leave the air-conditioner on during the day, but it meant that the room was stifling when they got back to it in mid-afternoon. 

Steve closed the window and turned on the creaky AC full blast. He turned on the light, too, and then turned it off, although the bulb was dim enough against the sunshine that it made little difference whether it was on or off. “You want to take a shower?” he asked Bucky. 

“No.” 

“It’d cool you down,” said Steve.

“ _No_.” 

Steve got Bucky a cup of water from the bathroom sink and set it on the bedside table. Bucky had already tossed himself on the bed, still in his boots and jacket. Even in the dim room his cheeks looked flushed, and it worried Steve a little.

“Bucky, you’d be a lot cooler if you’d take off that jacket,” Steve said. 

“No!” 

“I can close the blinds,” Steve said. 

“I don’t like her touching me.”

Steve felt an unpleasant punch-in-the-gut sensation. “Who?”

“My _arm_ ,” said Bucky, with the exaggerated intonation that strongly suggested he was mentally tacking on _you moron_. “Katyushka.”

“Your arm has a name?”

“Yes. Like the guns from the Great Patriotic War. Petya said – ” Bucky shifted to another spot on the blankets. “ – that my arm was better than a Katyusha. But that was my first arm – second arm.” He laughed. “First metal arm. With a rifle in it, and I lost it…” His face scrunched up. “Is there an ice machine?” 

“I don’t think so,” Steve said. 

“Check!”

“ _Bucky_ – ”

“Please?” 

The hotel seemed a little eerie in the middle of the day: it wasn’t the kind of hotel where people hung around when they could be anywhere else, and so it was almost empty. Motion sensors tripped the lights so they only lit as Steve walked under them. The ones at the beginning of the hallway fell dark before he reached the end.

He was pretty sure there wasn’t an ice machine, but he checked all four floors, just in case. On the second floor he heard a child crying while a woman crooned soothingly in Japanese, and in the lobby a teenage girl sat at the front desk staring disconsolately at the dead screen of her phone. Otherwise, no one. 

And no ice. But it didn’t matter, because Bucky was dozing by the time Steve got back. Bucky stirred when Steve came in, but closed his eyes and fell asleep again after Steve softly closed the door. He had drunk the glass of water Steve left for him. Steve refilled the cup, set it on the bedside table, and retreated to the lumpy armchair in the corner. 

The air conditioner had kicked in while Steve was gone, and the room was cold enough to make Steve’s sweat feel unpleasantly clammy. He got a sweatshirt out of his duffel bag and put it on, then settled again in the chair with his tablet. 

Steve had spent most of July reading the cottage industry of SHIELD histories that Natasha’s datadump had inspired. It made painful reading. One book had called for Peggy to be prosecuted (“It’s only too bad that Howard Stark died before the world could send him to his own Nuremberg trial,” the author opined), which made Steve so angry that he spent the night stalking around Anacostia, hoping someone would try to rob him. Then someone did, and Steve dispatched him with a single punch, and realized the flaw in his plan: unless a whole gang showed up, preferably armed with submachine guns, he wasn’t going to break a sweat, much less punch out his feelings.

He read about SHIELD’s secret hoard of alien artifacts, supposedly destroyed but actually stashed away for research. The extralegal secret prison facility at the Fridge. The research facility at the Sandbox, where scientists – with Hydra ties, but still under the umbrella of SHIELD – experimented on people with powers. 

(If it had been anyone but Peggy, would Steve have agreed with the calls for prosecution?)

Just before flying to Florence, Steve had started reading an unexpectedly delightful book about the hacking wars that ensued after Natasha’s datadump, when the hacktivists at Rising Tide battled both SHIELD and Hydra hackers to keep the files online, complete and unedited, and won.

The Rising Tide also added an easy to navigate search function to the files, and once Steve’s vacation was over he planned to start cross-referencing the claims in some of the more credible books to the database itself. 

Right now, though, Steve was mostly holding the tablet because he felt that he ought to be doing something other than watching Bucky. Bucky lay on his side on top of the comforter, facing away from Steve, the curve of his body tight enough to suggest he was a little cold. Steve wanted, as he had wanted in the station, to hold onto Bucky and never let go: curl his body around Bucky’s, press his face into Bucky’s hair, put an arm around him, warm him up. If only Bucky would calm down enough to let him – if only Bucky would calm down enough to want it.

It was a bit of a the-chicken-or-the-egg problem: being held calmed Bucky down, but he never wanted to be held until he was already pretty calm…

Steve must have dozed off in the armchair. When he woke up, the sun slanted sharply through the window, and he could hear the water going in the shower. Steve’s mouth felt dry and cottony, but there was no way to get a drink till Bucky finished showering. 

Fortunately, Bucky’s showers rarely took long. Soon he stomped out of the bathroom, a broken bootlace flopping off his combat boot. His hair hung around his face in dripping tangles. 

Steve must not have been entirely awake yet, because he said, “You want me to comb your hair for you?” 

“I’m thinking of cutting it off,” Bucky snapped. 

“Really? Oh. Okay.” 

“It’s a pain,” Bucky said. He jerked his boot off his foot to try to tie the broken lace back together. “Taking care of it.” 

“I guess,” said Steve. He felt unaccountably unhappy at the thought. “It’s your hair. You can do what you want with it.” 

Bucky was having trouble tying the broken bootlace back together. His metal hand couldn’t seem to grip the lace quite well enough. 

“Buck, let me do that,” Steve said.

“I can do it!” Bucky snapped, clutching the boot in both hands like he expected Steve to rip it from him. 

“Okay,” Steve said. He lifted his hands in surrender. “Okay.” 

He got out his tablet and attempted to read a little more of the Rising Tide book so Bucky wouldn’t feel like Steve was watching him. He didn’t really intend to read at all, yet suddenly he found himself at the end of the chapter, and Bucky had fixed his boots and stood at the window, looking over the welter of rooftops beyond. “You want to eat dinner?” Steve asked. 

Bucky shrugged.

“There’s a nice restaurant near here,” Steve said. “The food’s good. And it has air-conditioning.” 

“It’s early,” said Bucky. “Only tourists eat this early.”

“We are tourists,” said Steve. “And I’m starving. Let’s eat.” 

Bucky ate plentifully, although without zest: he paid more attention to watching Steve eat than to eating himself. Steve tucked away course after course: charcuterie, risotto, roast chicken with asparagus, tiramisu, a shot of espresso. 

“You’ve got a good appetite,” Bucky said. 

“Yeah,” said Steve, and smiled. He was kind of proud of his appetite. 

Bucky smushed the remains of his panna cotta under his fork. 

They went to the Boboli Gardens afterward, a labyrinth of hedges and stone with barely any flowers to soften it. A few giggling children chased each other around the hedges, their parents sitting around the wide fountain and fanning themselves with their brochures; but the gardens were mostly quiet except for evening birdsong. 

Steve had hoped that the peaceful environment and the greenery would help Bucky talk, but he just seemed to get quieter, though without the earlier bristling quality. He seemed sunk within himself. 

Steve came to a stop at a bench in one of the upper grottoes of the garden. At least the brochure called it a grotto; Steve wouldn’t have applied the word to that expanse of open space. But it was lined with benches, and Steve settled himself down on one. His skin prickled with sweat.

Bucky stretched his legs out in front of him. The laces on his combat boots were bulky with knots. It wasn’t close to sunset yet, but the sun was low enough that the hedges cast long shadows on the lawn. He couldn’t even hear the traffic here, just an evening bird singing in the trees.

Bucky twisted a twig off the hedge and twirled it between his fingers. His gaze roved over the empty lawn. Somewhere below, a child shrieked, in excitement or maybe rage.

Bucky tossed the twig away. “Coulson said you’re not coming back to the Bus.”

“I’m not,” Steve said, and wished he knew just how Coulson had presented that information. “But I meant it when I said I want you to help me pick out our new apartment, and come visit regularly. I was thinking a week every month…” Bucky’s roving gaze suddenly fastened on Steve’s face. “If you’d like it more spaced out or – whatever you’d like, Bucky, we can work with that. We’ll have to talk to Coulson about it, of course.” Much as Steve hated it, Coulson was still Bucky’s boss. 

Bucky toed at the gravel. “A week every month?” he said. 

“Yes,” said Steve. “Or something like that, we’d have to settle the details with Coulson. And if you ever want to roll back your involvement with SHIELD – ”

Bucky’s eyes glazed over. 

“Not that you ever will, maybe. But you can always come to our apartment if you need to. Or if you just want to. Okay?” 

Bucky nodded. He sat for a while; then, gingerly, he leaned his head on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve reached up and threaded his fingers up through the hair at the back of Bucky’s head. Bucky shuddered and straightened and pulled away. 

“I don’t think we should do this again,” he said. 

“Do what?” Steve asked. 

“This. Visiting. You should get the stupid apartment on your own,” Bucky said. 

Steve felt suddenly cold. “I don’t understand,” he said. 

“It’s so much – ” Bucky was having trouble talking; he kept stopping, swallowing, and going on again, and each time his voice got flatter and duller. “ – trouble for everyone – you coming all the way to Florence – ”

“That wasn’t any trouble, Bucky, I’ve always wanted to go to Florence. I’d have been happy to go anywhere to see you.” 

Bucky sighed slightly. “We both have better things to do,” he said. 

“Bucky, really, it wasn’t any trouble,” Steve said. He was trying to stay calm. Bucky had been so cheerful and charming for their last few phone calls, Steve had expected this meeting to go so much more smoothly. “Did Coulson tell you it was too much trouble?”

“I’m capable of having thoughts without Coulson putting them into my head,” Bucky snapped. 

Not quite a _no_. But also not a topic worth pursuing right at this moment. Steve tried to put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, but Bucky shied away, and Steve let his hand drop. “Buck, I love seeing you. I love talking to you,” he said, and hoped Bucky heard the sincerity in his voice. “When we had to push our phone call a couple days later three weeks ago, I moped so much that Natasha started calling me Eeyore.” 

“Rebecca used to call you Eeyore,” Bucky muttered. “You’ve been fucking Eeyore as long as you’ve known me.” 

Steve smiled. The first Winnie-the-Pooh book came out when Bucky’s little sister was six, and Rebecca remained enthralled for most of her childhood. “She called you Tigger. I can’t remember, did she cast herself as Winnie-the-Pooh?” 

“I think she was Christopher Robin.” There was a brief ripple of animation on his face. “Or maybe she made up an animal for herself.” 

Steve smiled at him. But Bucky’s face had gone flat and sullen again, and he still wouldn’t look at Steve. “It’s not like we’re even talking,” Bucky said. 

“So?” said Steve. “That’s okay, Buck. Honest. Just seeing you is fine. You’re my best friend – ”

“Oh, God,” said Bucky, and he covered his face with his flesh hand. “Shut up, Steve.” 

“You are,” Steve insisted.

“Then get better friends! Fuck, Steve, I broke you.” 

“You did not – ”

“Don’t fucking lie to me!” 

“I’m not lying!” 

“I made you miserable for nearly three fucking years, and then you got the fuck away from me and you were finally happy again, and you honest to God expect me to believe – ”

Steve cut him off. “I’ve been happy because I got away from SHIELD!” 

Bucky was silent, but Steve could see he wasn’t convinced: he had folded in on himself, like he had a stomach ache. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

But of course Bucky would take it that way. Steve’s recovery after leaving SHIELD had been so dramatic, of course he would take it as an indictment of himself. 

And despite that, ever since Steve’s birthday, whenever they talked on the comscreen Bucky had been charming and funny, happy to rehash Brooklyn stories with him. Asking about Steve’s day. Trying to help Steve be happy. 

Bucky probably would not appreciate it if Steve pounced on him to cuddle him, but Steve sort of wanted to. “Bucky, I’m happier because I left SHIELD. It’s not because I’m away from you. It’s because I thought I was trapped there – ”

“With me – ”

“And you were the only good part of being trapped there, Buck, honestly. I don’t know how I would have made it through the spring without you taking care of me.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Bucky snarled, and Steve was taken aback by the rage twisting his face. 

“I’m not patronizing you,” Steve said. “I mean it, Buck, really.” 

“I _wasn’t_ taking care of you. All I ever do is hurt you, even when I try to help you all I do is make things worse. I’m the one who made you stay at SHIELD so long, I knew it was killing you and I made you stay.”

“Only because you thought they wouldn’t let me leave,” Steve said. 

“So?” Bucky flared. “I was wrong.” 

“I never should have put you in a position where it was your decision whether I stayed with SHIELD, I shouldn’t have put that responsibility on your shoulders. You thought you were doing what was best for me – ”

Bucky was shaking his head. “I told myself I was, but I was probably fucking lying. I wanted to stay, I wanted you to stay, and fuck what would be good for you, fuck what you wanted. I acted like Pierce.” He straightened up, hands slipping into his pockets as he sat on the bench, and his voice got just a touch deeper. “You’re saving the world, Steve. You’re fine here, you’re okay, I’ll take care of everything. You don’t really want to go anywhere else.” 

The imitation was uncanny. Steve had only met Pierce once, but the hair on his arms rose. “Stop,” he said, uneasy, and Bucky gave a jagged ugly laugh. 

“I gave you a nervous breakdown,” he said. He wouldn’t look at Steve. “I’ve been awful to you for three years and you finally snapped, and I don’t blame you, Steve, but let’s not draw it out. This might as well end here.”

Steve hesitated only a moment, then slid off the bench and knelt beside Bucky. The gravel cut into Steve’s bare knees. “Bucky,” he said. “Bucky, listen.”

Bucky didn’t even lift his head. 

“You didn’t give me a nervous breakdown.” 

Bucky was shaking his head. He had lifted his hands, not quite pressing them over his ears, but he looked as if he wanted to.

“ _Listen_. It’s your turn to shut up and listen, okay?” Steve paused, but Bucky didn’t answer. Steve could hear his harsh breathing. “Okay?” he pressed. 

Bucky lifted his head a little, then jerked upright. “Jesus _Christ_ , Steve, get up off your knees.” 

Steve hauled himself to his feet, a little clumsily because his knees were sore. The gravel had scraped up his skin, and Bucky looked at the red marks with a sickish expression. “They’ll be fine in like ten minutes,” Steve assured him. 

“I just keep hurting you,” Bucky repeated. 

“Bucky, it’s not like you pushed me down on the gravel,” Steve said. Bucky shook his head and kept shaking it. “Bucky,” Steve said. “Bucky. Listen to me. You’re not wrong, okay? I broke down, and yes, fine. You’re right. It’s partly your fault. Looking after you wore me down.” 

That caught Bucky’s attention, at least. He lifted his eyes to Steve’s face. “But Jesus, Bucky, it was my fault too. When you came back, I had completely unrealistic expectations. I thought I could be everything for you, all the time. Sam told me I needed to set boundaries, take time to recharge, that it was going to be difficult and you weren’t going to be able to set your own boundaries at first – ” 

Steve paused. He expected that to make Bucky mad: the idea that there was anything he couldn’t do. Bucky’s shoulders jerked, but he didn’t protest. 

“But I figured, what does he know? Not like trauma therapy is his profession or anything, right?” Steve smiled crookedly. “His ideas might apply to other people, but Steve Rogers, the most stubborn kid in Brooklyn – I was invincible. I could take anything you could do to me.”

“You can’t,” Bucky said, and his voice cracked. “I broke you, Steve, I break everyone. I’m ice.” 

“Listen,” Steve said again. “I was wrong. I’m not invincible, and I can’t be everything you ever need. I was wrong, and I broke down, and that’s put us both through hell. And, yeah, I needed some time away from you, because – ”

“I’m difficult,” Bucky interrupted.

“Yeah, and – ”

“I’m _exhausting_.”

“Yes,” Steve said, more decisively. “Sometimes you’re both those things. Sometimes I’d like to throttle you because you can be so damn frustrating. But you’re worth it and I love you and you’re not getting rid of me – ”

“Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up!” Bucky yelled, and it was loud enough that there was a pause in the birdsong. Bucky stopped talking, hand over his mouth, and when the song picked up again he started talking too, low and tense. “I just keep hurting you, and you just keep taking it, you won’t fucking give up. It’s like we’re back on the helicarrier and you keep letting me punch your face, only this time I don’t know how to stop and I just keep going and I can’t, Steve, please don’t let me hurt you anymore, please. Please give up.” 

“Bucky – ”

“Please!” 

“You think that’s the only way you’ll stop hurting me? If you never see me again?” 

“Yes,” said Bucky, and his voice was raw and sad and tired, and Steve thought, _Fuck everything_ , and hugged him. 

Bucky went tense all over at his touch, so tense that he shivered, and Steve tightened his grip. “Listen to me,” he said. “I am not giving up on you. I don’t care if you think you’re a fucking iceberg and you’re going to sink everything you touch, I’m not leaving unless you just hate me so much that you want me to go. Do you want me to go?”

Bucky shook his head, but it wasn’t an answer to Steve’s question: it was a refusal to answer at all. His shoulders strained against Steve’s arm. 

“Bucky,” said Steve. “Talk to me. Do you want me to go?” 

“No!” Bucky said. “I never wanted you to go, I never wanted you to leave me. Why’d you have to go away, Steve?” 

Steve held him tighter. “I just got tired,” Steve said. He was talking into Bucky’s hair, practically kissing him as he spoke, and he couldn’t tell how much Bucky was hearing, because Bucky was weeping into his shoulder, and twisting his head away from his tears like he hated it. “I needed a rest, Buck, I’m sorry. I knew it would hurt you but I had to get away from SHIELD, and I’m sorry, and I’m so much better now that I’ve left. You’ve been so good to me, Buck, talking to me every week, you’ve made me so happy, I never knew you were hurting like this. Buck. Bucky. I just needed a rest.” 

Steve wasn’t sure if his words helped, or if Bucky just got a hold of himself. But Bucky relaxed, his head resting against Steve’s neck, and sniffed and wiped at his face; and then he drew away, and cast a defiant look at Steve through red-rimmed eyes. “I knew that,” Bucky said. “I did know that.” 

“I know you did,” Steve said. “Sometimes things don’t seem true till someone else says them, though.”

Bucky dug through his pocket for a tissue and blew his nose. 

“And you don’t hurt me all the time,” Steve said. He reached out, stroked Bucky’s hair; but Bucky tensed up, and Steve dropped his hand to rest on Bucky’s shoulder instead. “You were wonderful to me last spring, Buck, honestly. I’m not just saying that.”

“You fell apart,” Bucky said. He looked down at the damp tissue in his hand, shredding pieces off it. “I tried to help, and it didn’t help at all, Steve, you just fell apart.” 

“Because I finally could. I knew you would hold the pieces together,” Steve said. 

Bucky didn’t start crying again, but his eyes looked soft and moist around the edges, like he was close to it. 

It might be cathartic. But Bucky hated crying, so Steve strove to cut the tension a little. He tugged on Bucky’s hair, very gently, and asked, “Are you really going to cut your hair off?” 

Bucky just looked confused. “Huh?” 

“You said – back in the hotel room, you said you’d been thinking about cutting it off.” 

“Oh.” Bucky scraped his foot over the gravel. “I don’t always listen to what I’m saying when I get like that.” 

The admission seemed to embarrass him. He drew away from Steve, fidgeting, glancing at the angle of the sun. Steve checked his watch. “We should probably head out,” he said. “The gardens close soon.” 

So they went out, walking down the staircases through the tall hedges. They passed statues, a fountain, a crumbling stair that made Bucky slip and almost fall. Steve caught his arm. “What time’s your train?” he asked. 

“I can’t tell you,” snapped Bucky, tensing. Of course: if Steve knew the time the train left, he could figure out where it was going. 

“We have time for another gelato,” Bucky said, softening, and Steve was pleased. 

“I’ll take you to Natasha’s favorite place. It’s not far out of the way.” 

So they ended up leaning against the wall outside the gelateria, Steve with a cup of hazelnut gelato and Bucky attempting to eat his cone of sour cherry and watermelon fast enough to keep the gelato from melting down his arms. The redness was entirely gone from his eyes: another blessing of the superserum. 

“We had watermelon for the Fourth of July,” Bucky said. He managed a wicked grin. “I spit the seeds at Hunter.”

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve said, dismayed, and Bucky laughed and looked pleased with himself, and then glanced away. 

“You know I’m going to be awful sometimes,” he said.

“I know,” said Steve. “It’s okay.”

“You _hate_ it,” said Bucky, and Steve was silent for a moment. Bucky could be cruel when he was awful, and it was true: Steve hated that. 

“I do,” said Steve. “But I think you hate it too.” 

Bucky’s melting gelato trickled over his hand. “Only sometimes,” he said, and his face crumpled up a little. “I’ll be awful to you again,” he said.

“I know,” said Steve. “And then you’ll get over it, and be nice to me again, and over time you’ll get better and you’ll be awful less.”

“You really think so?” 

“Yes,” said Steve. “This time last summer, you’d just concussed me. Things have gotten a lot better.”

Bucky laughed. There was a slight edge of hysteria in it, and Steve caught it, and started laughing too. 

The watermelon gelato on Bucky’s cone suddenly detached itself from the sour cherry, and fell with a plop on the pavement. Bucky abruptly stopped laughing. He looked aghast, then furious.

“Let me buy you another,” Steve said. 

Bucky’s face tightened, and for a moment Steve thought he would refuse. But then he sighed, and said, “Okay.” 

Steve bought him watermelon, again, and fig, because he knew both were delicious even though he wasn’t sure how well they would go together. “Think we should get a gelato maker to go in our new apartment?” Steve asked, presenting Bucky with the new cone. 

“You never give up,” Bucky said, exasperated and admiring at the same time. 

Steve smiled. “That makes two of us,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> This story involved tortuously mouth-watering research about gelato. If you too would like to suffer from this exquisite torment, [Relax. Have a Gelato](http://www.exurbe.com/?p=980) and [How to Spot Good Gelato from 15 Feet Away](http://www.exurbe.com/?p=2392) will probably make your day.


End file.
